Now more than ever, Republicans should take great pride in our Party's heritage of civil rights achievement. They should remember the words of Joseph Rainey, the South Carolina Republican and former slave who was the first African-American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives: "We love freedom more, vastly more, than slavery; consequently, we hope to keep clear of the Democrats!" And, it was Mary Terrell, an African-American Republican who co-founded the NAACP, who declared: "Every right that has been bestowed upon blacks was initiated by the Republican Party."

A very sad chapter for Republicans happened after the civil war when they grew tired of Reconstruction expenses and "cut and ran" from the South. Unfortunately this gave the KKK a free hand to act as the terrorist wing of the Democratic party and restore Democratic control to the Southern states. It wasn't until Nixon came along with his Southern stategy to split the South between Wallace voters and Humphrey voters that Republicans regained control in many southern states. Gotta love those third parties. ;-)

I agree. We discuss this in "Patriot's History of the United States"---how the only solution that would have given the freedmen 40 acres and a mule legally would have been for Lincoln to label the rebels, well, rebels guilty of treason. Now, if he had done that, he could have given large-scale pardons to the vast majority of southerners and used it to break up the plantations of the wealthy slaveowner planters. It would have been legal, constitutional, and would have saved us all a LOT of trouble.

Probably not a lot: the subsequent share-cropper contracts were a less effective arrangement than if the blacks had owned their lands themselves and had the planters had to "get competitive" from the get-go. They still ended up relying overwhelmingly on cotton.

I am so glad to see the True History of this Nation once again being touted in the MSM! It is long past time to be telling the REAL history of this country rather than the re-written version from the Democrats and Liberals, who most decidedly have a GREAT DEAL TO HIDE!

I strongly recommend Mike Zak's book for anyone interested in the history of the Republican Party. It's amazing that we let the Democrats virtually steal our history of freedom for the oppressed, and turn it against us. 527 organizations that support the conservative cause should put out a series of "instructional" commercials letting minorities know where the freedoms they enjoy today came from.

Well, that's just dandy of the Republicans. And doesn't it seem they are so eager to boast. Okay, so tell me, what's the excuse for not securing the borders from invaders? Or is that an issue that is totally irrevelant? Come on, Republicans, you're the ones who supposedly do all the right things for a people. Why haven't the borders been secured?

It was proposed by Sumner and Stevens, but Lincoln wanted to "restore" the Union---hence he was remakably charitable to the Rebs ("with malice toward none, with charity for all"). His primary goal of restoring the Union remained. However, we don't know what he would have done with the Sumner/Stevens plan, because he was killed before Congress could really debate it. I personally doubt he would have signed it, as he missed his window, which was the moment the South seceded.

Yes, it's also interesting that while some of the "Neo-Confeds" hasten to point out that a tiny handful of blacks "fought" for the Confederacy (most experts say less than 1% of all blacks who were "in military service," i.e., as cooks and laborers in uniform), they routinely ignore the fact that more than 80,000 WHITE southerners fought for the Union, including units named the First Alabama Cavlary, the Mississippi Rifles, and an Arkansas cavalry regiment, not to mention 40,000 Tennesseeans.

His assassination of Lincoln left a terrible desire for vengeance in its wake. The South was taxed nearly to death and ground under the boot heel of the Union as a result. If Lincoln hadn't been shot, his plans for rebuilding the Union would likely have proceeded and as a result would probably not have settled the slavery issue as totally as it was by the policies of the government after he died.

Hmm, so failure in one area completely negates one of the greatest feats in human history on the other? ___________

Being one of the last western nations to abolish slavery, and having to fight the most deadly war of our history to do so, doesn't really rise up to the level of "one of the greatest feats in human history", IMHO.

The founders knew slavery was wrong, but also knew that addressing the issue at that time would have meant no nation.

I also wonder if the GOP intends to trumpet the fact that abolishing slavery also put the federal government into the driver's seat vis a vis states rights.

In Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Thomas Sowell points out that slavery existed as an accepted institution unchallenged throughout history, worldwide, until the Eighteenth Century. Throughout that long era Christians did not reject the institution (for other than themselves and their kin) any more than the Hindus or the pagans or the Buddhists or the Confuscians or the Muslims did.

No literature existed anywhere to defend the institution of slavery before the such literature started to appear in the American south, because until then the institution of slavery had never been under consistent and determined attack. Christians didn't begin to mount effective opposition to the institution of slavery until the Eighteenth Century but no other cultural ifluence ever has mounted such opposition.

The British underwent the expense of maintaining a naval squadron off the west coast of Africa for no other purpose than suppressing the slave trade which - apart from the moral issue - was absolutely no skin off Britain's nose. Indeed, the purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation - which "freed" only those slaves where its writ did not run - was to take the possibility of British recognition of the Confederacy off the table. The British industrial revolution was centered in its fabric mills, and those mills ran on cotton; the British economic interest alone would have dictated British recognition of the Confederacy, which could have doomed Union efforts to suppress the Confederacy. But with the Lincoln Administration having officially stipulated that the Civil WAr was not only about defending the Union but about abolishing slavery, British opposition to slavery precluded British support for the Confederacy.

The (huge) British Empire continued to exert pressure against slavery, inducing people who had no interest in its abolition to assent for the sake of relations with Britain.

28
posted on 04/17/2006 10:13:59 AM PDT
by conservatism_IS_compassion
(The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)

I think you mean "What would it have done to an economy almost exclusively dependent on agriculture?" Since slavery was used not only for cotton but also tobacco and rice, and to some extent indigo. Of these tobacco was considered the least onerous re: slaves, while rice was far and away considered the most brutal.

30
posted on 04/17/2006 10:30:53 AM PDT
by yankeedame
("Oh, I can take it but I'd much rather dish it out.")

Yah. A lot of truth to that. L. was the one man who could have both browbeaten the whites into some reasonable acceptance of blacks, and at the same time tempered the calls by blacks such as Fred. Douglass for immediate social equality, which wasn't going to happen.

Actually, our abolition was far more courageous than that of these other "western nations," who had miniscule amounts of slavery on some isolated islands. It cost them literally nothing. But slave wealth in the South was equal to all the industrial/railroad/and textile wealth in the North combined.

This was absolutely astounding, for a nation to take such an economic "hit" for a moral issue, and that, after all was what the Civil War was really about.

All true. In fact, a majority of slaves did not work on plantations . . . and yet, slave wealth was overwhelmingly tied to land value. See James Huston's new book, Calculating the Value of the Union which shows that slave wealth exceeded that of ALL the North's railroads and textiles put together!

Funny, but it's also pretty much a given among economic historians that slavery had already started to gravitate into industry and urban settings and that had there been NO cotton, slavery would have thrived. See Huston, Calculating the Value of the Union or Roger Ransom's "counter-factual," Confederate States of America.

While I am unsure re: the situation re: rice, by the 1860 the market -- both nationwide and int'l -- for tobacco/tobacco products had been in a glut for nearly twenty years. Most slave owners in the central southern states, VA, etc, in fact made ends meet by selling "excess" slaves, tobacco being, as it were, sort money losing side-line to add a veneer of respectability.

However, unlike tobacco there was a huge, seemingly never-ending, ever increasing demand -- both nationwide and on int'l markets -- for cotton, esp. American cotton. New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, etc. would loan the southern farmer money on the condition that he plant cotton -- for they knew there was a eager market for that product. So, more and more, the southern farmer (of any size but the very smallest) stopped a (healthy) diversity of crops and came to plant cotton...nothing but cotton. B/c that's where the money was, and b/c that is the one crop bankers would loan him money on and for.

It wasn't called "King Cotton" for no reason.

(Given the day and age and financial situtation, it's hard to believe that even with 40-acres-and-a-mule that the freed slave would, on average, have achieved much more than a subsistance level.)

37
posted on 04/17/2006 10:46:19 AM PDT
by yankeedame
("Oh, I can take it but I'd much rather dish it out.")

On the other hand, Lincoln had advocated passage of the 13th amendment, insisting that it be included in the 1864 Republican platform. After it had passed congress, he'd signed it and sent it to the states. So his position pushing for total abolition is well established at the time of his death.

Given the day and age and financial situtation, it's hard to believe that even with 40-acres-and-a-mule that the freed slave would, on average, have achieved much more than a subsistance level.

I don't like comparisons like "subsistence level" when you are talking about historical comparisons. Compared to today's standards, middle class Americans of 1950 were "poor."

And compared to modern American standards Queen Victoria was middle class - an American secretary enjoys so many modern conveniences and so much better health care (for herself and her family) that an American secretary would have to think long and hard about trading circumstances with Queen Victoria.

41
posted on 04/17/2006 11:42:12 AM PDT
by conservatism_IS_compassion
(The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)

1) You are right about the demand. But you are missing a key, the price. Beginning around 1860, new gluts of cotton from Egypt and India started driving the price down. Now, cotton was STILL more profitable a crop than, say, corn, but overall prices were falling, and most economic historians (Gavin Wright, for example) think that if the South hadn't already been so wedded to cotton, it might have made a somewhat smoother transition to industry.

2) No, they were not losing money. Both Time on the Cross and subsequent studies (Reconing with Slavery) concluded that slavery was not only profitable in almost all parts of the South, but viable because of the increasing value of property in slaves.

3) My doctoral dissertation was on Southern banking in the antebellum period. The bank loans were as much on slaves per se as they were cotton. (I found the same slaves used as collateral for several loans simultaneously!) Indeed, "King Cotton" proved a bust---Br. and France didn't need it at all.

4) The 40 acres and a mule argument was less about subsisetnce and more about independence. If we had done that, while there would always be a Jesse Jackson, it would be much tougher to ever argue that blacks were "economically discriminated against" after the Civil War, because they would have had basically what most whites in the South had---and, indeed, what most free farmers in the north had.

If we have learned anything about slavery from the ancient Greeks to the present, it is that slavery is not about the type of labor being done, but the fact of forced labor without consent.

Richard Wade has a good book, "Slavery in the Cities," and Richard Starobin has a book on industrial slavery in the antebellum south. Personally, I always thought it would have been a no-brainer to use slaves in the silver and gold mines out west, because there is only one way in and one way out, and they are easily controlled.

Probably because at the time he portrayed it, ONLY Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered, not Hood's army in the West or the other "armies" that the Confederacy still had in the field. Those surrendered over the subsequent three weeks.

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